The most important regarding how long your dog training sessions should be is to end the training session before your dog loses its concentration. Regardless of the training session’s length in time, you will have to end the session before your dog loses focus on the task at hand.
How long your dog is able to keep focus is dependent on several factors. It might depend on your dog’s age, its state of mind and might differ depending on its breed.
The Perfect Length Of A Dog Training Session
As a rule of thumb, a puppy training session should last 5 – 10 minutes, and a training session for an older dog should last 15 to 20 minutes. As long as the dog keeps its concentration on the task at hand.
If you are starting out with your puppy’s obedience training soon after receiving it, start slow, with short sessions. A young dog might have the stamina to conduct longer training sessions, while an older dog doesn’t. A puppy just doesn’t have the same ability to concentrate on a task that an adult dog might.
Many, But Short Sessions
A successful training session demands complete focus. It’s better to keep a training session short rather than trying to train for an extended period. You can always implement many short training sessions of 10 minutes for a puppy and 15 minutes for an adult dog. It is preferred, and you will see results faster.
Other factors to consider when deciding on the length of your dog training sessions are your dog’s age and how much training you have conducted earlier.
Your Dogs Attention Span
Your dog’s attention span will influence the length of your training sessions.
Start out by learning what attention span your dog has. You may start with short training sessions and increase the length little by little. Get to know your dog.
And some days, you’ll find that your dog has a hard time concentrating. In these situations, you should cut down on the length of each training session.
Training Session Length Puppies
Assuming you get your puppy at 8 – 10 weeks. You will want to keep training to 5 -10 minutes, at least once a day and up to 3 times a day. This is about all the time a puppy can hold its attention.
As soon as it’s getting older and more used to dog training, you may increase the number of sessions during the day, but keep each session at 10 minutes.
Give a lot of praise and rewards when your puppy gives you a response when you call his name or do the task you’re trying to teach. If he doesn’t respond, don’t punish him; just do not give the treat or extra praise. Then you will soon learn how long attention span your puppy has.
Remember, you do not have to limit the training to just the sessions. You may incorporate repetition into playing, feeding, and natural life throughout the day.
Keep training one task at a time when you’re puppy starts its training. Continue until it has it completely down. Then move on to a new task but keep reinforcing the old ones during the day.
Don’t just dump food in the bowl and walk off. Instead, call the puppy to you, praise him, make him sit, praise him. Then he gets his food. This will enforce his training and give him manners without a session.
Training Session Duration Young Adult Dogs
Generally around 6 – 8 months, the training sessions can be increased to 15 – 20 minutes, still at least once a day and usually 2 – 3 times a day. Or, you may choose to extend your training sessions to 45 minutes per session. But if you do, make sure your dog can keep its attention during the session and stop the training if it doesn’t.
At this point, your dog can give you more time with his attention. Keep working on just one new task at a time. Always keeping old training fresh. You can always ask them to “come” and “sit” at the end of a session. This will give you the chance to end every session positively with a treat and praise.
By this time, they should have the basic manners down. And leash training should be coming along very well. You may want to train tricks or just keep things on the same positive track. The more time you spend with your dog at play putting these commands to use, the less time you actually need to have training sessions. A training session is for learning something new and not for just going over old stuff. Your dog will get bored quickly with the same old stuff.
Training Session Duration Older Dogs
An older dog can be trained and isn’t usually as easily distracted as a younger one. The thing with older dogs isn’t just training them; it is often untraining them. If your dog is getting used to getting on your bed and you want it to quit that habit, you may have to spend more time untraining that behavior than training them to go to their own bed.
The training of an older dog is usually going to take a bit longer because of the untraining. But keep each session at 15 – 20 minutes to keep its attention. The key is still patience, praise. And reward. These 3 things are the best way to get any dog to respond well. And enforcement is the way to keep them in-line.
